"a lesson to those who depend solely on a particular internet program for all their revenue." How do you know what program everyone uses for revenues do you think all publishers are depending from one and only? My revenues come from 5 programs.

If it is only the people who sign up after June 23 who are affected by this then most of us do not have to worry about switching to JS links.

This will not affect only those who sign up after June 23.

This will affect everyone, including visitors to your site. All publishers will have to, at some point, switch the links over. All visitors will have to wait for the javascript to load.

It sucks being on dialup, but what sucks even more is that I have no other choice. It's bad enough waiting on one adsense ad to load. I won't subject any of my visitors to even more javascript on my pages.

From what I have read it affects all publisher-merchant relationships formed after June 23. Then somewhere down the road it will probably apply to everyone.

Now I'm glad I got kicked out of CJ for inactivity, LOL, but I guess I'd better get off my butt and apply for another publisher account and start signing up with any program I might conceivably want to use in the future.

Ummm, while I understand the frustrations, the reality is, if you're gonna be in this arena, then you absolutely must see all sides' points-of-view. The merchants are fed up. Did no one but the merchants and CJ notice? C'mon.

Every affliiate marketer is in it by the good graces of the merchants. You may not like it, but that is the truth.

How many affiliates in here are actually building branded sites? Puhlease. If one runs a mainly aff based site, then your future hangs in the balance of decisions made by people you do not know, and have never met. Even if you're big enough to have relationships with CJ big's or LS big's, they are still just aggregators. The power, ultimately, is in the hangs of the OEM's and OSP's. That doesn't mean one shouldn't be an affiliate. Only that one should plan ahead, understanding the points of view of the key players in the marketplace....planning all the while for best and worst case scenerios.

So, make a plan. First go out and do the search and replace thing. If your site is set up with some flexibility, that should not be hard at all. Then figure out what is coming next, say, two to five years down the road, and plan your future around that.

OK, it blows that people can't use CJ backfill links anymore, but other than that, a this is just a blip in the radar.

We're actually looking to get into CJ in a bigger way right now. Heh, heh, that's a first. But the thing is, I can hear the sucking sound of people going out the door. Can you say, "Opportunity?" ;-)

Great post caveman, you pretty much summed up what I was trying to say in my previous post. People seem to have all the time in the world to complain but when it comes down to doing the actual work, they don't have enough "person hours" to get the job done right.

People seem to have all the time in the world to complain but when it comes down to doing the actual work, they don't have enough "person hours" to get the job done right.

Ummm, you really don't get it do you?

Time spent to change links is a small chunk of the bigger issue.

I suppose you don't mind increasing page load times to run remote javascript code even for something as simple as a text link.

Or, I guess you don't have a problem with allowing an advertiser to make any changes they want to their text links and have that information automatically pushed to your site, without you even eyeballing the changes.

From the publisher's standpoint, the change to the javascript links only benefits affiliates that aren't willing to spend the time to keep things current. The downsides are many.

There's still more to this story to come, including the technical implementation details. Big mistake for CJ to drop this bomb without the stuff that will show us how difficult it'll really be, or not.

My understanding is that the merchant will have to provide you with any keyword links so that you can market their products via SEs.

It's a single link that you add to CJ for publishers to make their keyword links with. You don't have to create a link for every kw.

It sounds like for PPC search links the merchant will give you a link to the homepage and that's what you get to work with.

The FAQ says you'll be able to deep link, just like before.

Then, if you create pages that integrate links into the copy and you have CJ or the advertiser changing them, your copy may end up looking really stupid. On top of that, every affiliate of a particular advertiser is going to have the exact same links on their pages.

Again...the FAQ. It says you'll be able to fully control the link text.

It really is too bad they didn't lead with some examples...old way / new way.

For whatever reason they are doing this, they know how their system is used and will hopefully have a solution for the different use cases.

Interesting, sounds like CJ - that already has left hand in a share of my affiliate earnings - wants another hand in.

It is not only about "merchants fed up". CJ wants what likes of G$$gle and Claria and few others have that CJ doesn't - uderstand what converts, where and when. Collect tons of data and analyze it. Then squezee out whatever converts to the maximum, and charge merchant for it accordingly. And whatever doesn't convert - well, it doesn't convert. G$$gle already did it, everyone else follows.

My company makes CJ and eBay a lot of money and paid well for it (I'm told by the eBay rep that we are a top 100 affiliate for them).... but if we have to put java links on our site that will slow down when CJ slows down....well for that matter Java is slow anyway...we'd simply drop their program....it's not our life blood....also it should be mentioned there are a LOT of surfers out there that have Java turned off....everyway I look at it ..it's not a good thing.

If they leave us alone with the present banner links working (we server side the banners because our site is blazing fast due to our well maintained multiple servers and we don't want to be dependent on someone elses server) then no problem....but if they force everyone to use java and worse the ads are on their servers......they are going to have a mass exodus of high value content and retail sites that put the customer experience first and foremost....they better be careful... because it's been discussed at our meetings and it was decided that we'd drop them if that scenario unfolds.

We have an eBay rep assigned to help our company and we'd have to tell eBay just exactly why we are leaving. If eBay loses high end affiliates....CJ will be in BIG trouble once companies eBay sees the numbers dropping.

but if we have to put java links on our site that will slow down when CJ slows down

It's not just when CJ slows down, their servers can be up and operational and your users can still run into problems.

When user X visits your web site, a connection is established between their PC and your server. If the page has javascript code that invokes from a 3rd party site, the PC then needs to make a connection to that site as well.

So user X may have no problems connecting between his PC and your server, but if there's any network problems or slow downs in the route between the user's PC and the CJ server, YOUR page load time will increase for that user. In some cases the delays can be fairly significant, and of course, the user will assume that it's your site that's causing the problems.

Very sad. CJ have been the best affiliate network for me over the last 4 years. I am not prepared to redo all my advert links, so time to move to others -Affiliate Window, Tradedoubler, OMGUK, Affiliate Future. So long CJ.

For the advertisers to which you were joined prior to June 23, 2006 (the launch date of the LMI), you will still be able to access Legacy link code for a limited time. We will notify you at least six months in advance of when this option is no longer available.

I've read a couple statements now that merchants are fed up and it led to this change. What I want to know is:

Where are these fed up merchants? I haven't heard a whisper from them.

If these merchants are so fed up, why are they inviting me to their programs?

If these merchants are so fed up, why are they accepting me into their programs?

Why haven't these masses of merchants been cutting the strings with those affiliates that are displeasing them so much?

I see talk of fed up merchants and talk of Google fed up and so CJ is just responding to that. Really? These are made as statements, not speculation. If these statements are true, why all the secrecy? How is an affiliate to know that their marketing methods aren't approved of? Aren't wanted? Why are these affiliates allowed to continue on? Why wasn't CJ clamping down and setting boundaries? Why weren't the merchants saying thanks but partnership is over now. Why were affiliate partnerships continued?

I don't see much reality in those statements at all. Because if they're true, this is just a monkey show. Don't guide and direct your sales crew. Just keep accepting, and inviting, and working with them and then pull the rug out say affiliate methods are horrible and bad.

I think the reality is something much different. CJ is just moving itself into a new position for new technology capabilities. Nothing more nothing less. It isn't about what merchants are wanting or what affiliates are wanting. It's about the direction CJ wants to move in.

If someone has FACTS that this change is in response to all the bad affiliates ruining the game for everyone, please share them.

I don't think I have seen a single statement about the reasons for this change outside of the official communication from CJ (their email and FAQ), that are not speculation and assumptions, no matter how strongly said.

It sucks that they didn't come out with more info from the beginning, but more is coming, hopefully next week.

And yet ANOTHER CJ merchant is inviting me to their program and sitting in my inbox. Sure I'll be grandfathered with legacy links since I'd be joining before the end of June, but why bother? The javascript will be forced at some point within the year I think. Just delaying the inevitable.

Shall I write Google and tell them of CJ's "brilliant" plan to get their affiliates back in the serps?

Do they really think Google isn't wise enough to detect their new links? A simple tweak to the indexing algoritm can detect and penalize CJ javascript attempt to circumvent Google's current penalty for affiliate links.

Quote from CJ:

"Recently released search engine ranking rules indicate publishers’ rankings can be negatively impacted if traditional affiliate links are present. Due to the unique structure of Commission Junction’s JavaScript links, search engines will see these links in a similar way as they see forms. Therefore our JavaScript links will not be identified as traditional affiliate links and ranking degradation should not result."

Why not use them to get our point across? I've responded to three email offers today with this:

---------------

Dear x,

Due to the upcoming requirements of javascript linking, I will not be joining any more programs through Commission Junction. If you have an account with another network or a private program, I'd be glad to take a look. Otherwise, I would suggest contacting your CJ account rep and letting them know if my reasoning for the decline concerns you. Thanks for your time.

Not only is threadwatch dishing up mac & cheese by pointing to guesswork about fed up merchants and fed up google, but now so is marketingvox. Are facts no longer an issue but personal guesswork and speculation takes hold of the headlines?

My question AGAIN is: Is CJ REALLY responding to Google and stampeding frustrated CJ merchant concerns about poor quality affiliate marketers and are fed up? And if so, why didn't merchants and CJ just turn off problem accounts instead of going to this extreme? I can't make sense of this.

CJ needs to release some strong information here, because at this point they're being dragged through the mud as being a network filled with neer do well schmalzty marketers (us btw).